From Ireland to Greece, officials are seeing hopeful signs that coronavirus infections are peaking and have begun to plateau or recede, pointing to intensive care beds that are slowly opening up and a daily reduction in the number of new hospitalizations.

In Paris, Milan and Madrid, hospitals and staff that were stressed to their limits just a few weeks ago, as thousands of coughing, fevered, breathless patients surged through their doors, are now reporting empty beds in their ICUs. There are ventilators to go around.

The Severo Ochoa Hospital in Madrid made international news programs with images last month of sick patients sleeping on the floor, waiting to be seen by a doctor. Now there are a few spare beds in Spain.

In London and elsewhere, governments that rushed to erect, almost overnight, the kinds of field hospitals deployed for war, famine or natural disaster, have found they are not needed, at least not now.

The ice rinks set to serve as temporary morgues …continued .
[Source: Washington Post]